A resistant product is a durable product?

Renewing a product less often means making savings from both an economic and environmental point of view. Extending their life span, and therefore reducing their renewal rate, appears to be an essential lever to reduce the environmental impact of each one.
The bonus? You can live a lot of adventures with your product: your backpack will become a faithful travel companion and your bike, a great original vintage edition for your children.

But for the company, you might ask, what is the point? Offering more reliable, more durable products also means generating fewer quality problems and developing real trust between consumers and the brand. Also, developing durable products answers a question that will only become more and more present: how to decorrelate economic growth and environmental impact? Being able to rent, sell second-hand, repair, reuse... products becomes an imperative.
In short, everyone has something to gain.

With tests, tests, tests. Some are done in the lab, others in the field.

And not just any field: everything is done to put the product to the test. A test on the UV resistance of a tent? Let's go to the sun. For months, this tent will realize the dream of many: travel to follow the sun. Tempting, isn't it ? ;) To test the resistance of a scooter, we will call upon a sportsman to ask him to realize all the possible figures. We equip the scooter with sensors and all that will be left is to have all these movements reproduced by machines in the lab...

Let's talk about the lab: it will be a crucial step to make the product go through an accelerated aging process. And if we can put a component through these tests rather than a product, it's even better... Why? So that it is even more efficient later on: a component can be used for many finished products!

You think you have understood everything? Good, let's add a little more :) We can now approach another notion: the relative durability. Here, we have to admit that quantifying a lifespan is very complicated. And sometimes, it is not even what we are looking for: we are looking above all to know which is the most durable product (on a scale from 1 to 10 generally).

But what if we really want to quantify a lifetime? Then we are talking about a quantified lifetime. In this case, it is essential to know the root causes of each problem.

We distinguish between:
- youth defects, which happen immediately on a product, rather related to a manufacturing problem, a quality problem),
- accidental defects: breakage, falls...
- wear and tear defects. It is by taking into account these three types of defects that we can define a product's life span.
Not all products benefit from this method, on the contrary. This method is rather applied on investment products (= expensive products 💶). For textiles, accessories, shoes ... it is the principle of relative life that will prevail.

Not necessarily :) The durability of a product depends on several criteria, such as the quality of the materials used, the way it is manufactured, the conditions of use and the ease of repair and recycling.
A product can be durable if we are talking about strength or ability to withstand extreme conditions, without being sustainable over time... For example, a drop-resistant cell phone may still not be durable if it is made of less durable materials or if it cannot be easily repaired or recycled.
In summary, the durability of a product depends on many factors and strength is only one aspect of durability.